A Nexus Analysis of Participation in Building an Information Infrastructure for the "Future School"

Abstract

Information systems projects nowadays often affect more stakeholders than before and the range of users is also more versatile. Thus, a need for a fine-grained conceptualization of involved actors, including users and developers as well as various other affected stakeholder groups, has been identified in the literature. Some studies have already discussed participatory processes for information infrastructure (II) development. Our study complements this research theme by offering a nexus analytic discourse analysis of participation of various actors in an effort of building an II for an educational network of a city, the actors including educational authorities as well as school staff, children, companies, and researchers. We found a number of discourses as well as concrete participatory practices justifying wide-ranging participation of various actors. Based on this, we suggest advocating for more genuine participation of teachers and pupils as part of the infrastructuring process, e.g. by creating enabling practices.